Interview with Carla Yvonne Barlow

Yvonne Barlow works for Gaylord Entertainment Company, which went public about two years ago. It's a conglomeration of entertainment and hospitality services. Here is the interview with Yvonne Barlow.

Company: Gaylord Entertainment Company


City: Nashville

Department: Legal Department

Title: Paralegal

Salary Range: $34,000-$40,000

Benefits:

Insurance: medical, dental

Financial: pension plan, credit union, 401 (k), stock purchase plan

Vacation: 21 days

Sick time: 6 days

Misc.: 2 personal days, fitness center

Previous Work Experience:

Sixteen years with a bank as a legal secretary, paralegal, and legal administrator.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

General Summary: Assists attorneys in all legal services provided to Opryland USA, Inc., and related companies, including the Broadmoor Hotel and Fiesta Texas, through investigation, research, drafting of legal documents, monitoring of court proceedings, and the organization and computerization of records and department information.

Job Duties

• Prepare contracts for corporate sponsors, concessionaires, and performers (singers, dancers, etc.)
  
  
• Prepare various releases and indemnities; prepare various corporate documents, including but not limited to written consent actions, resolutions, secretary's certificates, meeting notices, etc. Prepare various corporate filings (i.e., annual reports, foreign qualification, dissolutions, and assumed-name filings). Maintain current list of officers and directors for each corporate entity as well as current mailing addresses.
  
  
• Accept service for garnishments and wage assignments, forward to appropriate payroll entity, answer to appropriate court, and field any problems related to same.
  
  
• Prepare and maintain records for collection of cable and satellite royalties.
  
  
• Maintain approximately 250 trademark/service marks. Fill all requests for information regarding date of first use; provide specimens of use, etc.
  
  
• Assist with preparation of various SEC filings (i.e., proxy statement, S-8s, 10-K, Forms 3, 4, and 5).
  
  
• Review and revise talent contracts.
  
  
• Assist attorneys with investigation and accumulation of information and supporting evidence, scheduling, responses, etc., for litigation.
  
  
• Assist outside counsel with lawsuits.

Education/Experience:

Formal Education: College degree

Specific Experience Required: two years with a law firm or corporate legal department, including assistance in litigation, legal research, drafting legal documents, and maintaining corporate books and records.

Licenses or certifications required: paralegal certification from an ABA-approved school.

YB: I work for Gaylord Entertainment Company, which went public about two years ago. It's a conglomeration of entertainment and hospitality services, including the amusement park Opryland USA, the Grand Old Opry, radio and television stations, a production company, a hotel with convention facilities, and a really nice golf course.

I came here about a year and a half ago. I had been a paralegal with First American National Bank in Nashville for sixteen years.



Questioner: Sixteen years! A long time.

YB: Yes. I was ready to make a change. I was supervising at the bank as well as doing paralegal work. I was the office administrator. I didn't like that at all.

Q: Office administrator of the legal department?

YB: Yes. I wanted to go back to doing just plain, cut and dried, paralegal work. And this opening came up. It's outside of the city; in fact it's at the amusement park, and it's very pretty. It's a great job. There are currently three paralegals and I just like dealing with all the entertainment services that we provide.

Q: Other than not having the administrative duties that you had in your other job, how is it different from that job?

YB: Oh, it's very different! Banking and the entertainment industry? It's like night and day. Banking is very, very restricted, structured, regulated, and conservative. It is very cut and dried as to how you do things. I did a lot of SEC work there, budgeting, and a lot of administrative and supervisory tasks.

Here my work runs the gamut. One day I may do a license agreement for a trademark; today I did one for a character called Patchy Panda. We're entering into a license agreement to allow a woman who is writing a children's book to incorporate Opryland USA into her book. So it's very different.

Q: If the areas are so different, how were you able to take your skills from banking to entertainment? Did they translate at all, or did you have to completely retrain?

YB: I think that organizational skills and analytical ability can move with a paralegal no matter where you go. Also, I had experience with contracts- -not a lot, but I knew the basic parts of a contract, what was legal and what was not. What was hard was transition from banking terminology to entertainment terminology. They kept talking about a venue. And I finally asked, "What is a venue? I don't know what you're talking about."

Q: I thought it was a legal term, a place of trial.

YB: Not in the context they were using it. They told me it's the theater where a performance will take place.

Clearly, the organizational skills that I brought with me serve me well. I may be in the middle of something, have to drop it to move on to something else, and then two hours later come back to what I was doing. There are a lot of dates to keep track of here, seeing that the contracts get out, get signed, and get back.

Q: What is a typical day like for you?

YB: Very busy. I have lots of contracts. The amusement park is seasonal. It's usually open from the spring until late fall. We're constantly redoing the contracts for the upcoming year or for special events the park may be doing, or for a concert that's coming up. I do a lot of corporate work here also, as we have many corporate entities. There are always written consents to be done, banking resolutions, minutes... In any one day I may work on corporate matters for an hour, go to trademarks, then go to contracts, and then go back to corporate. I do some or all of it every day. I never do one thing all day long.

Q: Are there attorneys in your department?

YB: Yes. There are six.

Q: Did you start out in a law firm before you worked for the bank?

YB: No, I started out at the bank. I went from secretary to legal secretary to paralegal.

Q: Did you have any formal training as a paralegal, or did you work into it? YB: No. I have formal training. I went to a paralegal school for six months and received a certificate. Most of my training, I must admit, came on the job, but the paralegal certificate was a way for me to say, "I have formal training." If I had stayed at the bank, I don't think it would have made any difference, but it does when you get ready to change jobs. I do think that with almost any job, most of the skills you use every day are going to come from on-the-job training regardless of how much formal education you have.

Q: What do you like best about your job?

YB: One of the things I like best is that it's less stressful than my old job because I'm not in an administrative capacity. Another thing is the variety--the contracts are all the same, but they're different. You do an artist contract, then you do a corporate sponsorship contract, then you do a concession contract.

Also, it's beautiful out here. This is a very nice environment to work in. There's a 2000-room hotel/convention facility located on the complex, which is beautiful inside. It has a conservatory and a large inside waterfall called the Cascades. They're planning to build an addition to the hotel with a river delta through it. We can walk out into the amusement park at lunch, or we can go to matinee performances at the Grand Ole Opry. We currently share the building with a TV station (TNN). When I went downstairs yesterday to get a drink, they were doing a cooking show.

Q: It sounds exciting.

YB: It's fun. Nashville is famous for country music, so there are always interesting artists coming in town. Our office isn't downtown and I really like being out of the downtown area.

I don't have the hassles with budgeting and staff here. That was one of the things I had wanted to do at the bank. I had wanted to be an office manager for a while to see if that was something I could take my skills to and move on. I did, but it was not what I wanted after I got there. I really enjoy paralegal work.

Q: The substantive work.

YB: Yes. At the bank I ended up not doing that much of it, and when I did it was usually after hours and at home because the day just wasn't long enough.

Q: What kind of hours do you work now?

YB: Basically, I work eight or nine hours a day.

Q: So it's reasonable.

YB: Very reasonable. Now, there are periods of time, such as right before the park opens for the spring season, when I have to work quite a bit of overtime to get all the contracts ready.

Q: What do you think it was that got you this job, as opposed to some other candidate?

YB: I think my all-around experience. Working at the bank, I had done some trademark work, contracts, and corporate and SEC work. They would allow you to do anything you had an interest in. Consequently, I tried to learn a little bit about everything because I assumed that eventually I would move on and I wanted to be well-rounded.

I think that in today's employment market, you've got to be well-rounded. If you specialize too heavily, it's going to limit you when you go to look for another job. I think that's what got me the job here. There were several candidates, but I believe I had a broader knowledge than they did. I also think that my willingness to take continuing-education classes and to do whatever it took to better my contract skills is what got me the job.

Q: Did you end up taking some CLE classes?

YB: I haven't had time, but they have trained me. I'm still learning as I go, but I've been told that I put together a very good contract.

Q: I assume that you don't bill hours.

YB: That's right. When I was at First American, we did bill hours for a while, but we found that for an in-house department it did not work very well. You do too many little things, so that at the end of the day, your day has gone but you may not have spent more than ten minutes on any one billable cost center. A consulting firm survey on time and efficiency showed that in-house billing was not conducive to using our time in the most efficient manner.

My current employer has not done any in-house billing up to this point. I think that in the future, they'll give it a try, just for the sake of saying that they've tried it. Most in-house legal departments I have talked with have tried in-house billing or plan to do it on a limited basis. I love not having to bill time.

Q: Do you have your own office? Or do you share an office with paralegals?

YB: I have an office, but it's a cubicle with a door. When we move to the new corporate offices next year, that's the kind of office we will have.

Q: Are there any benefits to your job other than being in a beautiful setting?

YB: We have good health care and retirement packages. We have a twenty-four-hour a day fitness center that is only eight dollars a month. They have aerobics, TV, showers, juice-you don't have to do anything but bring your clothes. I work out almost every day.

Another thing I like is that they have security guards. To get in at any entrance to the complex you have to go through a ranger station. I feel safe out here, and that is something you do not have in downtown Nashville. Also, we park right outside our offices, which is not something you have downtown. Downtown, you pay dearly for any kind of parking.

It's a wonderful group of people. The people in the entertainment industry have fun.

Q: How big is this company?

YB: Someone told me that we have over four thousand full-time employees and over four thousand seasonal and temporary employees.

Q: Do you have thoughts as far as your future career goes? YB: Not really. I'm content to do what I do now. I'm not looking for "advancement" in terms of changing positions and moving up. I did the administrative thing, and I was not particularly happy with it. I like doing the substantive legal work. I like to be given an assignment and left alone until I complete it. I hope to stay here until I retire, but after having been in one position for sixteen years, I take it a day at a time, a week at a time.

I do not regret one moment of working for First American, but I also don't regret leaving, because I have a wonderful job. I think you should be happy in your job. That's the most important thing of all. The money's not important, the vacation's not important, because if all of those hours that you spend on the job are not fulfilling, you're missing the boat. That's my plan-just to enjoy it as long as it's fun. When it's not fun anymore, if it becomes not fun anymore, I will look elsewhere. I tell people "Life is too short not to enjoy what you're doing."

Now, this job is not perfect; no job is. I told someone recently about a bad day I was having, and I added "But overall I love it." She said to me, "It wouldn't be called work if it was fun every single moment of the day." She's right. There are days when things go wrong and everything feels like it's tumbling down, but by and large, I love it.

When I was looking to change jobs, I was scared about the money because I had been at the bank so long and had received a couple of promotions that had boosted my pay up. I thought, "There is no way I'm going to go out and find a job making what I make, with my limited banking experience." But you can take your fundamental knowledge and your basic skills and go anywhere with them if you're determined to be flexible and learn new things.

Q: Did you end up having to take a cut in pay?

YB:No.

Q: So all your fears were for nothing.

YB: Yes. I also negotiated for an extra week of vacation beyond what was originally offered. At the bank I had to work so much overtime in order to take a vacation that the vacation really wasn't very much fun because I dreaded coming back to work. My current job is not that way. I have a week less of vacation here than I did at the bank, but I feel freer to take my vacation time. I also have about the same benefits here; in fact, they may be a little better. All in all, I came out ahead.

The only thing that I can tell paralegals out there, whether they're young and just starting their career, or whether they've been in the work force for awhile and are changing careers, is this: You've got to go with the flow and be flexible for that first job. You can't always go in and sit in a private office with a private secretary and get the choice assignments. Some of us who've been doing this for many, many years don't get that.

New paralegals are going to have to look in other places for jobs outside of the law firm setting. There are many jobs that use paralegal skills which are just as much fun. The key is to keep an open mind regarding the minimum you will accept. The job market in Nashville is getting a little better, and I think the people coming out of the paralegal schools here are looking in places they wouldn't have looked for jobs three or four years ago. They've been forced to do that because of hard economic times, and now it's become a habit. After all, who would have ever thought that a paralegal could work at a bank for all those years?

I have never considered myself to be a non-traditional paralegal. I think I probably have more responsibilities and less supervision than the paralegal friends I have in law firms, partly because in a corporate setting you basically have one client, so we don't have the malpractice issues to face.

Something attorneys try hard to avoid is any accusation of malpractice by a client. Basically, malpractice occurs when an attorney (or his or her staff, including paralegals) fails to exercise, for the benefit of the client, the level of knowledge, skill, and ability which an attorney is ordinarily expected to have. If the client is damaged by this failure, the client may have grounds for suing the attorney. Unfortunately, even though attorneys try to avoid malpractice, the number of such lawsuits is steadily increasing. This may be due to several factors: American society has become more and more litigious; jury's award higher and higher dollar amounts, making these lawsuits more attractive to plaintiffs (although sometimes states put caps on the amounts juries can award); the public is increasingly conscious of its right to sue; and clients' expectations of their attorneys have generally increased.

Whatever the reasons, there is no dispute that attorneys are being sued more and more and that their insurance companies are paying out higher and higher dollar amounts.

There is no sign that malpractice rates will decrease anytime soon, although mediation of malpractice disputes, loss prevention seminars for attorneys and their staffs, and vigorous defense by attorneys being sued for malpractice may help to curb the increase. Most important, of course, attorneys and their staffs, including their paralegals, need to conduct themselves in a professional, ethical manner-the best defense of all against a malpractice suit.

HINT:

Usually in a malpractice suit, the attorney is going to be sued, not the paralegal. However, paralegals can be and have been sued themselves. One of the benefits of being a paralegal in a corporation or non-profit organization is that your client is your boss, which means that you may get fired if you do a poor job, but you probably won't get sued!

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